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News server Romea.cz. Everything about Roma in one place

Czech Police said to have prevented parents of deceased Romani man from seeing his body before the autopsy

21 October 2016
2 minute read

The video above is an interview with Miroslav Demeter, the father of the young Romani man who died in Žatec earlier this week. Many things remain unclear about what precisely happened when the man entered the Panamera restaurant.

Mr Demeter has told news server Romea.cz that because of events that transpired before the incident at the Panamera, he is considering filing a report of suspicion of a felony against both the hospital in Žatec and against the Czech Police. This is an edited translation of the interview:

Miroslov Demeter, father:  They called us to say our son had been taken to the hospital in Žatec. Apparently he had been detained by the local police in Louny, and they transported him to a cell for preliminary detention or whatever it’s called. At around 15:00 he complained of belly pain, so the police called an ambulance, which took him here [to the hospital in Žatec]. The nurse said she would find out whether he had been released. When the hospital never contacted us, my wife decided to drive to Žatec with a friend to look for him. She stopped at the bus station to see if he was there, but he wasn’t, so she kept driving around looking for him. As she drove past the pizzeria, she saw an emergency vehicle there, and she asked the emergency medical responders who they had come there for. They wouldn’t let her see the body they had there, but they described to her what the person looked like and what he was wearing, and it was clear that it was our son, and she told them that. She immediately called me, crying, and said somebody had killed our son. Right away she, I and my brother went to the police because we wanted them to explain to us what actually happened. They said our son apparently caused trouble in the pizzeria and allegedly touched some women there. The police were called, who pacified him, and he allegedly collapsed. That’s all. It seemed weird to us – why would he collapse? We asked them whether we could see the body so we could confirm whether it was our son, but they wouldn’t let us see him. I asked whether I had a legal right as his father, as his parent, to see the body. They told us more than once that we could not see him until after the autopsy. I believe they did that on purpose.  

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